#interesting mammals

[whatnext10]

Armadillos Don’t See Well, but They Have a Great Nose

Taking a Break On one of my recent trips to Watermelon Pond a pretty little nine banded armadillo (Dasypus novemcinctus) found me. I was hiking through the woods towards the water when it happened along. I say it found me because it came out of some heavy underbrush into the more open area where I was walking. It looked around, never saw me, and began to follow its nose around in search for some…

[serpentface]

The wassibi, threatening you with a very bad time.

Wassibi are mid-sized (11-16 lb) solitary mustelids. This species is native throughout the lands south of the Viper seaway, thriving as generalists in a great diversity of habitats (though rarely occur in very arid environments or at high elevations). They are omnivores, using their broad noses and strong claws to dig out earthworms, beetle larvae, roots and tubers, foraging along the ground for insects, scorpions, bird eggs, fallen fruit, and small lizards and snakes, and occasionally scavenging carcasses and trash. They are particularly noted for their ability to find honey- splitting open bees nests with their claws and leisurely consuming larvae and honeycomb, seemingly untroubled by bee stings.

Wassibi are known above all else for their devastatingly noxious defensive anal gland spray. When threatened, they hiss, arch their backs and tails, raise their fur, and point their anus menacingly in the direction of danger. Should posturing fail, they will unleash their spray at the threat's face. Their anal glands have powerful muscular control and the attack is devastatingly accurate at up to 10 ft. In addition to having an atrocious stench, the liquid is mildly irritating to the skin, painful and temporarily blinding to the eyes, and can induce intense nausea and vomiting. The smell is resistant to washing, and can take weeks to fade. Most predators who experience a hit will learn to recognize the wassibi's stark aposematic coloring and avoid anything resembling it.

In addition to this potent defensive weaponry, they have dense fur and thick, loose skin, which renders them difficult for most predators to effectively grasp or pierce without risk of being bitten themselves. As such, wassibi have few consistent natural predators and are given a wide birth by most other animals. Their tendency to walk boldly in the open and sometimes even scavenge at carcasses alongside much larger predators commonly lends them cultural reputations of fearlessness. Wassibi are known for attacking large venomous snakes that potentially threaten their young, which (along with their frequent consumption of scorpions and bees) leads to common misconceptions that they are entirely immune to venom. They have no such resistance, rather their thick fur and loose skin cause bites and stings to land less effectively- most stings fail to penetrate their fur altogether, and bites often deal glancing blows that inject little to no venom.

Their biggest predatory threats come from humans. Wassibi meat is fairly rich and not unappealing to most palates used to wild game, but they are rarely considered worth the effort and risk of killing for consumption alone. They are more commonly hunted for their pelts (worn commonly by Wogan and North Wardi herders in hopes of deterring attacks from predators), bones, claws, and fat (used in traditional medicine for their purported antivenom properties). This hunting is fairly limited in scope overall, and most Wassibi populations remain stable.

[mstormcloud]

I think applying tropes commonly found in Sonadow fics to other sonic ships is very funny

Like today I saw the cute posts by Blu-ish about how hedgehogs circle and headbutt eachother when courting and how Sonic and Shadow would do that and I agree.

However I think the implication that mobian hedgehogs do this is HILARIOUS when applied to ships that only involve one hedgehog.

Like Silver starts circling around Espio one day and lightly shoving him with his hip or his shoulder and Espio is like: ???? What are you doing??

Or even Blazamy like- Amy keeps circling Blaze and the less Blaze reciprocates Amy does it more to try to get Blaze to react. Blaze eventually just tries to politely tell Amy to stop cause it’s hard to hold conversation while she’s moving all around.

But later Blaze talks to Silver and is like: “I have no idea what she is trying to do…perhaps she is finding a weakness in my stance? Should I fear her hunting me for sport???”

And Silver is like: uh. Well. I think she’s hitting on you? It’s a hedgehog thing.

And Blaze just freaks out because WHAT DO YOU MEAN AMY WAS FLIRTING WITH HER

[respect-the-locals]

🐬 Daily Cetacean Fact: 🐬

Pygmy Killer Whale: The pygmy killer whale is a poorly known and rarely seen oceanic dolphin. It derives its common name from sharing some physical characteristics with the Orca. It is the smallest cetacean species that has the word "whale" in its common name. Although the species has been known to be extremely aggressive in captivity, this aggressive behavior has not been observed in the wild.

[front-facing-pokemon]

[the-worms-in-your-bones]

Having a normal time (debating on whether or not time lords can be classified as mammals)

[smellybead]

Leopard seal stuff from the past couple of days hehedhfejbubefu4hehebehy4

hehdhehsdhdebujhbsvjhbjwhbvjhbsdvjhbjhbvrwjhbsvdjhbjhbdfsjhbvdsjhbvdsbhjdsvjhbdvsbjhdvsjhbvdsjhbvdsjhvv

[crybaby-bkg]

just read from my psych of sex class that studies show exotic dancers who did lap dances while ovulating received more tips than those who were on birth control and ovulating. this is giving me many thoughts will return later 🏃🏽‍♂️

[diehellasrache]

This is our new small son Pancake Augustus Surname-Surname, he weighs two pounds and is quite difficult to photograph

[toelessbastard]

Take a shot everytime an ABO writer says milk or its varients

[vimbry]

just honest to god adore those deconstructed concepts in the lyrics like "glass of milk, standing in-between extinction in the cold" as a descriptor for mammals and the function they're named for, "flammable undiagrammable sentiments pass between animal beings" to mean sparks fly during romantic chemistry, and "newborn citizenship of the micronations" referring to reproducing and new offspring, like. like! like!!!

[ace-and-ranty]

Saw one of them Reddit posts, "What food makes you think, 'How did humans figure out this was edible?!'"

Plenty of cool answers, mainly discussing highly toxic foods that need a lot of processing to be safe.

And then a bunch of people said milk.

MILK.

You are wondering how we figured out. We could drink milk.

HOW DID MAMMALS.

FIGURED OUT.

WE COULD DRINK.

MILK.

[flirts-with-dragons]

Ok so can I talk about how fucking absurd platypuses are

You got a creature that looks like duck

Lays eggs like a turtle

And is a fucking mammal????

And it's the silliest looking thing ever

You can watch live wildlife cameras of them just zooming through the water so damn fast

And they can KILL YOU WITH POISON

They're just the silliest goofiest animal of all time and I need everyone to appreciate the full glory of the platypus

[johnnyslittleanimalblog]

Jasmina yawning  by Tambako The Jaguar Via Flickr:

[pine-arten]

i spent all yesterday making a semi-realistic slugcat base. i used sphinx cats as a reference, so they’re pretty cat like here

 i imagine they hold themselves different than an actual cat though, plus more robust shoulders for bipedal-ism

this is the survivor btw :) i think i’ll do monk next